Some perspective

On Wednesday, President Obama signed a bill authorizing the construction of a new Stillwater Bridge, a $690 million project that will serve possibly 18,000 car trips per day. Here are some other transportation segments that serve at least 18,000 trips per day.

To name just a few. Some of these facilities may currently have adequate capacity, but I’m sure quite a few are in a state of deferred maintenance (potholes, surfacing) or could use significantly better infrastructure (bus signs, shelters, pedestrian facilities, intersection redesign, etc) to serve existing users. I assume that if any of these segments need improvement, we’ll see bipartisan support and state and federal funding up to $690 million per.

(A special runner-up goes to the SE Washington Ave Bridge, which in 2011 saw an estimated 6,850 bicycle trips per day. That’s only about 38% of 18,000, so $262 million for bike improvements on this span should suffice.)

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About Brendon Slotterback

Brendon is a professional planner and Sustainability Program Coordinator for the City of Minneapolis. He has a degree in Urban and Regional Planning from the Humphrey School at the University of Minnesota. When not at home in southwest Minneapolis, he may be catching trout or riding a bicycle. You can find his blog at netdensity.net and you can follow him on twitter. His views are his alone, and do not reflect those of his employer.

I think that we have an unhealthy obsession with "mega projects". It goes beyond economic reasoning. We do it because we can. Unfortunately this attitude turns out to be a large drain on limited resources with a poor ROI. Money could be better spent on existing infrastructure (such as the projects listed above), or simply not spent at all.

Brendon- you gotta run for House or Senate and get this thing stopped. You've got my support!

Actually, there's an interesting area here for investigation. Why is it that the *bigger* a project is, the *less* it is subject to scrutiny? (Exhibit A: Vikings Stadium!) Does anyone have any expertise in marketing psychology who could explain this?

Good question. What is the psychology here? I'm not totally sure. I'm interested to see how these debates play out in Europe, Canada, South America, Australia? Or do they not play out at all?

I know in Australia, the State governments are usually responsible for the funding of (nearly) all mega-projects. Meaning – they typically are more conservative and do a bit more due diligence on the finances/benefits. That's not to say they don't still make mistakes.

Re: St. Croix Bridge – my thoughts are that a project like this elsewhere in the world would be a public-private partnership / toll-bridge / shadow tolling system. Of course, on that note, if it were elsewhere it'd probably include a rail line or bus lane.

I look at it this way – if we were to divert money spent on the St. Croix Bridge & the Minnesota Vikings stadium – we could probably get 1.5 to 2 light rail lines out of it. Public transit, at least in the American psyche, registers lower than that of cars and football.